


All You (Have) To Do (Is) Stay

by rabbithole26



Category: Fifth Harmony (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbithole26/pseuds/rabbithole26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camila goes for a different approach. She complains about never being kissed, excessively, for the next year. Three hundred and sixty five days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All You (Have) To Do (Is) Stay

It’s only about a week after Camila meets Lauren that she decides that this is the person who is going to get her first kiss. This is the person she _wants_ to give it to, this is the person she _can_ give it to and never regret it after the fact. She can just tell. What she hadn’t thought out was how to make that happen. After all, most girls don’t usually just ask their older best friend to kiss them, so Camila goes for a different approach. She complains about never being kissed, _excessively_ , for the next year. Three hundred and sixty five days.

 

Well, maybe it’s more like three hundred and seventy nine days, because that’s how many days pass before Lauren finally does it. Camila is complaining about how she’s never going to get a boyfriend because she doesn’t even know what a kiss feels like, _again_ , and so Lauren leans over and kisses her, hard.

 

“There. Now you know.”

 

Camila smiles because her plan worked.

 

She’s also pretty sure that she doesn’t necessarily care if she ever gets a boyfriend. She doesn’t really want one now. She never really wanted one, if she’s being honest.

_People like you always want back the love they gave away  
And people like me wanna believe you when you say you've changed_

It starts like this:

 

Camila loves her best friends from home to death, she really does, but if she had to spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with them, she would want to kill them. So when she doesn’t end up wanting to kill Lauren, even though they are on tour together and in each other’s faces constantly, she realizes that’s probably a very special thing, and very special things are meant to be held onto.

 

Camila’s been learning to play the guitar and Lauren is constantly scribbling down things in her journal, so one day they decide that maybe they should try to write a song. It’s just for fun, until they realize they’re actually pretty good at it. They don’t show their stuff to anyone else though, mostly because Camila likes that it’s _their thing_.

 

It’s one of the group’s rare days off, and it happens to also be a sunny day, so Ally, Normani, and Dinah immediately find the closest outdoor mall to wander around. Lauren and Camila chose to wander into the woods near their hotel instead, armed with only a journal and a guitar. Camila is sitting on a rock, strumming random chords while Lauren leans against the tree across from her, tapping her pen against her leg. They both currently have writers block when it comes to the bridge of the song they’re working on and it’s driving them crazy.

 

“We literally just need, like, four more lines,” Lauren huffs.

 

“I know, I know, I know,” Camila says, trying to think, “Okay, tell me about one of your favorite memories. We need some happy vibes to finish a happy song.”

 

“I have almost eighteen years of happy memories, Camz.”

 

“And you can’t pick one?”

 

“Not off the top of my head!” Lauren laughs, “Um, I mean I always liked Christmas as a kid?”

 

“Very detailed. I feel like I was there. You’re really getting the creative juices flowing,” the younger girl replies sarcastically.

 

Lauren rolls her eyes, picks up a twig, and launches it at the girl across from her. Camila lets out a squeal as she ducks, “Don’t scuff the guitar!”

 

“Why don’t you tell me one of your favorite memories then, since mine aren’t descriptive enough,” the older girl says.

 

“Childhood memory? Recent memory? What do you want first?”

 

“Recent. Like, in the past year.”

 

That’s an easy question for Camila and for some reason she gets a surge of confidence to actually tell Lauren what that memory is. Maybe it’s the way the sun is shining through the trees, or maybe it’s how quiet it is when the two of them stop talking, or maybe it’s just how it always feels like a special moment whenever she’s writing with Lauren that makes her decide to say it.

 

It’s like they’re in a different world.

 

Camila strums another random chord as she responds, “Remember the day you kissed me? That was a really good day.”

 

Lauren’s face shifts into a look that Camila swears she’s never seen before. It almost looks like Lauren is...nervous. The younger girl doesn’t think she’s ever seen Lauren nervous, like, ever.

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah, although, I would hardly count that as practice. Like, I know you wanted to shut me up, but if some guy tried to make out with me, I’d still have no idea what I was doing,” Camila trails off, quieting the strings of her guitar.

 

If Lauren looked nervous before, that look has quickly vanished, because she’s got a smirk on her face now. The kind of smirk that makes Camila the nervous one. Lauren closes her journal and sets it down carefully near the other girl’s feet. Lauren drops down to Camila’s eye level and takes the guitar out of her hands, placing it gently on the ground right next to the journal, before she looks back up at her. Green eyes are all that Camila sees. And then just like that, Lauren’s kissing her again. But this time she doesn’t stop after a quick peck.

 

They never end up finishing the song.

 

It feels like the start of something. It really, really does.

 

...

 

It’s four months later and they’re sharing a hotel room in Pittsburgh, or maybe it’s Philadelphia, or maybe it’s Baltimore. They can’t really keep up with the locations these days.

 

It’s been four months of subtle (or not-so-subtle) looks during interviews, light touches during choreography lessons, and make outs during their writing sessions. Camila thinks that she might be in love. Or at least, she could be close to being in love. Because when she isn’t performing, her world is revolving around the most beautiful girl she thinks she’s ever seen and they’re just _happy_ together. They haven’t really talked about their _relationship_ much, and they haven’t told anyone, but she doesn’t think they really need to because they’ve always been on the same page. The same wavelength. That’s been enough for now.

 

Tonight, Lauren has Camila pressed into the mattress of her bed, Camila is lightly biting down on Lauren’s lower lip, and this has become the usual for them before they go to sleep every night. Except tonight Lauren doesn’t stop after she takes off the younger girls shirt, tonight she starts tugging at Camila’s shorts and that’s when it all goes downhill.

 

Camila freezes. Lauren notices.

 

“Um, we should probably like, get ready for bed, right?” Camila breathes out.

 

She’s just not ready. It’s not that she doesn’t want Lauren, because she does, it’s just that she’s nervous, and self-conscious, and not quite there yet.

 

She’s just not ready.

 

But Lauren doesn’t know that because Camila doesn’t tell her that. Lauren knows that the girl is new to all of this, and she would never, ever pressure her into something she didn’t want to do, but tonight Lauren takes her hesitance as a rejection. Rejection in the sense that maybe Camila isn’t into Lauren _like that_. Rejection in a way that makes Lauren start to think that maybe Camila _is_ just using her to practice her kissing skills so that when she does get that boyfriend she’s always talked about, she won’t seem so inexperienced.

 

But it’s not like Camila could know that either because Lauren doesn’t say anything. She just nods, slowly gets off of the other girl, and rolls over.

 

Lauren doesn’t say a word the next morning either.

__  
The more I think about it now, the less I know  
All I know is that you drove us off the road

It ends like this:

 

The key to a successful relationship is communication; at least that’s what Camila has heard from almost everyone she knows who has actually been in a serious relationship. Communication used to be why Lauren and Camila had such a strong bond, they didn’t even need to speak actual words and they already knew what the other was thinking.

 

It’s not like that anymore.

 

It’s not that Lauren doesn’t speak to Camila anymore, because she does, it’s that she doesn’t talk to Camila about the important things. She talks to Camila about the weather, what’s for dinner, and which verse she’s supposed to sing in their new song. She doesn’t talk to her about anything else.

 

Camila can’t blame Lauren entirely because there are things she thinks she probably should have _just said_ too, but now she can’t even get Lauren to engage in a serious conversation long enough to try to bring it up.

 

They don’t write songs together anymore. They don’t hold hands under tables. Lauren doesn’t kiss her goodnight anymore. Lauren starts to room with Normani whenever they stay in a hotel.

_  
Hey, all you had to do was stay_

_Had me in the palm of your hand  
Then why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in_

Camila makes the mistake of thinking she has time. She thinks she has time to give Lauren her space to figure out whatever has been going on with her. She thinks she has time to wait before the inevitable confrontation she assumes they’ll have.

 

Until they start a new tour, opening for a bunch of guys, and one of them sets his sights on Lauren. His name is Brad and sure, he’s cute and talented or whatever, but he’s just _some boy_. But the first time they meet he makes Lauren laugh and he’s looking at her like she’s the only one in the room with him and that’s when Camila starts to feel sick to her stomach.

 

For the next few weeks she tries to pretend that she doesn’t notice Lauren always going on his tour bus to hang out. She tries to pretend she doesn’t notice that he kisses her on the cheek after their set every night or that they flirt with each other on instagram.

 

What she can’t pretend she doesn’t notice, however, is when she hears them writing a song one day and realizes it’s _the song._ The only one her and Lauren never finished because they had started something else together that day.Lauren and the boy are sitting in the back of the parking lot and they aren’t singing very loud, but Camila knows what it is the second she hears the chorus. Against all of her better judgment she marches right up to the two of them. She’s so incredibly pissed.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Brad looks up at her with a smile, a genuine smile, and she hates that he isn’t a complete douche, “Hi Camila, we’ve just finished one of Lauren’s songs. Want to hear the bridge? I think we need a second opinion.”

 

She doesn’t even respond to him before she turns her gaze to Lauren, “I thought I asked you not to show those to anyone.”

 

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. I wrote them too,” the raspy voice responds.

 

“Oh, you helped write some of these?” Brad chimes in again, “In that case join us, they’re really great, I’d love your input on some of my additions.”

 

Camila would rather eat rocks than sit here with the two lovebirds and listen to him ruin all of their songs, so she rudely spits out, “I’ll pass,” before turning on her heel and walking back to the girls’ tour bus. She feels a little bad for being rude because she knows it’s not the boy’s fault, but she’s furious with Lauren. She’s furious at herself for ever trusting that girl with her heart.

 

Camila storms back onto the bus and sits herself down on Lauren’s bunk, waiting to give the other girl a piece of her mind whenever she decides to come back. It only takes Lauren fifteen minutes to arrive on the bus, so she must have realized how mad her friend was.

 

She starts walking towards Camila, but as soon as she reaches the other girl, Camila snatches the journal out of Lauren’s hand and opens it up to the beginning. She starts violently ripping out every page that has a song that she helped write on it.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” Lauren yells, trying to grab the journal back.

 

“They’re mine. You can’t have them.”

 

“Actually they’re _ours,_ I wrote on those too.”

 

“Well, whatever, you can’t have them,” Camila huffs, “I didn’t write them for you and your boyfriend. I wrote them for you.”

 

At this point Lauren immediately stops trying to grab the book back. She’s the one who freezes up this time. Camila flings all of the torn paper to the floor, a single tear rolling down her cheek. She swore she wouldn’t break in front of the older girl but here she is, crying.

 

“Camz...” Lauren starts.

 

“Don’t. Don’t call me that,” Camila croaks out, “Just don’t.”

 

Camila walks to the bathroom at the back of the bus and slams the door shut, leaving Lauren to pick up the pieces, literally.

__  
Hey, now you say you want it back  
Now that it's just too late  
Well it could've been easy

_All you had to do was stay_

Camila has a date.

 

When Austin asks her out she says yes, only because she doesn’t have any reason to say no. The girls help her get ready, straightening her hair, doing her makeup, and picking out what she should wear. Well, all of the girls except for Lauren, but she’s off with Brad somewhere. Like usual.

 

The girls conveniently disappear by the time Austin shows up at the bus to pick her up, but as soon as she greets him she realizes she only has one earring in, the other one left on the counter in the chaos of getting dressed.

 

“Oh my gosh, I forgot my earring, give me one second. I’m so sorry!” Camila says to the boy before she turns to hop back onto the bus.

 

“No worries. Take your time, beautiful,” he responds with a grin and Camila is pretty sure that should make her feel all giddy inside, but it doesn’t.

 

She returns back to the mirror, puts the other earring in, and as she turns to head back outside she almost physically runs into Lauren, who appears to have just gotten back from wherever she had ran off to. Lauren looks rather confused.

 

“Why is Austin standing outside of our bus?”

 

“Uh, he’s waiting for me.”

 

“What do you mean he’s waiting for you?” Lauren’s voice cracks this time as she seems to take in Camila’s appearance, realizing she’s not just in sweats anymore.

 

“He’s taking me out.”

 

“Like on a date?”

 

“Yes, that’s usually what it means when a boy takes a girl out.”

 

“He can’t take you on a date,” Lauren says in a matter-of-fact way.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“You can’t go.”

 

“Oh really? And why is that?” Camila raises her eyebrows with amusement, wondering why Lauren thinks she has any room to comment on Camila’s love life anymore.

 

“Because I don’t want you to.”

 

Lauren knows how ridiculous she sounds right now but the thought of Camila going out with _him_ is too much to handle.

 

“You are unbelievable. Get out of my way,” Camila spits back, trying to push her way past the other girl.

 

Lauren blocks her path, “I’m serious, please don’t go with him.”

 

“Coming from the girl who spends every second of free time, every single day, with her boyfriend? That’s funny.”

 

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

 

Camila laughs, “Oh please Lauren, there’s no need to sugarcoat anything on my behalf. It’s fine. In fact, I’m going to put all of that _practice_ we did to good use tonight.”

 

Lauren looks like someone has slapped her across the face, but she doesn’t say anything else. She just quietly steps aside, making room for the younger girl to leave. And with that Camila’s out the door. She kisses Austin on the cheek knowing well that Lauren is probably watching them.

 

“Sorry I kept you waiting, are you ready?”

 

“Absolutely,” the boy smiles, throwing his arm around her shoulder.

 

It doesn’t feel right but she doesn’t make him move it. __  
  


_Here you are now, calling me up, but I don't know what to say  
I've been picking up the pieces of the mess you made_

The next morning there’s an envelope taped to the ceiling of Camila’s bunk, so that her name, written in neat cursive, is staring back at her when she wakes up. She would recognize that handwriting anywhere.

 

Inside the envelope are forty-one pages neatly folded up, forty-one pages of songs that she’s had a part in writing. There’s another sheet of paper, folded up separately from the rest, and there’s only two words written on it. _I’m sorry_.

 

Camila wishes there were more words written on the piece of paper. Two just aren’t enough, at least not now.

 

...

 

Instead of immediately going off to the boy’s bus after soundcheck today, Lauren follows the girls back to their bus, and in an even more out of place move, she asks Camila if she will talk to her outside for a minute.

 

“I’m not seeing Brad anymore,” Lauren blurts out the second they are alone.

 

“I mean, he does leave the tour tomorrow, I kinda figured you weren’t into long distance,” Camila replies, unsure why the other girl is even telling her this. They haven’t talked about anything outside of band related discussions for weeks.

 

“That’s not...I’m not...That’s really all you have to say?”

 

“What else am I supposed to say?”

 

“Well, I just thought maybe if I ended things with Brad then you wouldn’t see Austin anymore,” Lauren is picking at her nails because that’s what she always does when she gets nervous.

 

Camila used to find it cute. Not today.

 

“Is this a joke?”

 

“Camila, I know my timing is terrible, but please believe me...”

 

“Seriously, Lauren?” Camila cuts off the older girl, “If Brad hadn’t been leaving the tour you wouldn’t have ended things with him and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You don’t want me. You never did. And I think we’ve both had enough practice by now, don’t you think?”

 

She goes back inside without another word.

 

If Camila had stayed outside the bus for a few seconds longer, she would have seen something extremely rare. Because Lauren had started to cry. Lauren never cries.

  
People like you always want back the love they pushed aside  
But people like me are gone forever when you say goodbye

Their time on the tour finally ends too, but it only takes a week afterwards before the tension between the two girls hits an all-time high. The rest of the group can feel it this time. It’s never been this bad before. Camila assumes its because she can only pretend for so long, and once she hits her breaking point, there’s no going back. There’s no hiding it anymore.

 

Lauren’s been practically mute for the entire week, not saying a word to anyone unless she absolutely has to, which ends up only being when she needs to sing. Normani tries to get Lauren to talk Camila, and Dinah tries to get to Camila to talk Lauren, but neither of them succeed. It’s just painfully awkward for everyone. Things can only go on like this for so long.

...

 

There’s this tiny fire escape on the side of their studio and Lauren likes to sit up at the top of it whenever she gets a break from recording. She’s never told anyone where she goes on her breaks though, so when she climbs up to her usual spot on this particular evening and finds Camila already perched there, she doesn’t really know what to do. The younger girl studies her for a moment, probably trying to distinguish if Lauren knew she was here or not, and eventually just pats the open seat next to her.

 

Lauren decides to sit down before she changes her mind. It only takes three and a half minutes of silence before the older girl breaks it.

 

“Can I ask you something if you promise to answer me honestly?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Was it really all just practice to you?”

 

“No,” Camila sighs, “It wasn’t _just practice_. It was real.”

 

Lauren leans her head back against the brick, wishing that she could go back and _not_ ruin everything they had.

 

“Can I ask you something now?” Camila says softly.

 

“Anything,” the older girl mumbles.

 

“Did you leave me because I wouldn’t sleep with you?”

 

Lauren groans, remembering the last night they had spent together before it all went to shit. Before she got too stuck in her head and pushed the other girl away.

 

“No. I mean technically, yes, but it’s not why you think. I would have waited forever for you. But I thought that you didn’t want to because you didn’t really like me. I thought maybe you _were_ just using me for practice and I just... I don’t know. I thought you didn’t want me.”

 

Camila let’s out a bitter laugh, “I always wanted you. I just wasn’t ready.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s okay,” the younger girl says, “It’s not like I said anything either.”

 

Lauren sighs. She has a point.

__  
Let me remind you, this was what you wanted  
You ended it, you were all I wanted  
  


It’s dinnertime and Camila comes downstairs clearly dressed to go out. Lauren’s in the kitchen heating up something in the microwave but when she sees the younger girl, her face immediately shifts into a frown.

 

“Where are you off to?”

 

Camila picks up her set of keys from the counter, “Dinner. Austin is almost here.”

 

Lauren knew that their talk last night wouldn’t solve everything, but she still thought that maybe it would change things a little bit. At least when it came to _him_. Camila looks at her for a second, as if she was expecting something, but when Lauren remains silent, the younger girl turns and heads for the door.

 

Lauren’s just being silent, like always. And that’s when it hits her. They wouldn’t even be in this mess if Lauren had just spoken up about how she was feeling. If she had just said something. If _either of them_ had just started a dialogue.

 

She can’t let that happen again

 

So Lauren quickly jogs to over towards the door and grabs Camila’s arm lightly, turning the girl back around to face her.

 

“Wait, don’t go” Laurens pleads, “Stay.”

 

Camila almost laughs because the fact that Lauren would even say that to her right now is absolutely ridiculous.

 

But there’s something about the way the other girl says that single word, a word that maybe Camila should have said a long time ago, that makes her actually consider doing just that.

 

Because Lauren says it in a way that also seems to sound like “I know I fucked up,” and that just might be enough for Camila. That might be enough for her to forgive the older girl. She could at least try.

 

“Okay,” Camila breathes, “I’ll stay.”

_  
But not like this_

_Not like this_

It’s not that easy, though. Austin may be gone but that doesn’t mean Camila is jumping right back to where they used to be.

 

She doesn’t want something half-assed anymore. She’s over ‘being young and scared’. She’s over whatever other excuses one could come up with at their age for being shitty at a relationship. Lauren seems to get the memo that she’s going to have to _work_ if she wants this. She’s going to have to prove she’s serious.

 

So Lauren does something every single day to remind Camila that she loves her.

 

Okay, yeah, she wouldn’t actually say that she loves her, because that’s kind of crazy after everything that’s happened, but she does. So she finds ways to say it without using the actual three words.

 

Some days it’s flowers. Or her favorite chocolate bar. Or poems. Or songs. Or a drawing.

 

Camila usually finds these things sitting on her bed at some point during the day, but other times they pop up in more unexpected places, like inside her shoe or attached to a random email. She never acknowledges the things that Lauren leaves for her. She never says ‘thank you’ and never discusses any of the words that the other girl writes.

 

Its not that they don’t talk, because they do, it’s just that they don’t talk about Lauren’s efforts and they don’t talk about their feelings towards each other. Which sounds pretty backwards now that Camila thinks about it, but it’s just that she wants to make sure she won’t get hurt again. She expects Lauren to get bored after a few weeks and to stop trying, like Camila thinks she did before, and then that will be the end of this whole thing.

 

By the end of the second month she can tell that Lauren is getting discouraged. Anytime that they are alone and there’s a chance for a moment or a discussion, Camila shuts it down, and it’s getting to the green-eyed girl. Because some days it feels like Camila wants her to give up, wants her to fail, wants _them_ to fail. But then Lauren will remember that she was the one who ran off with Brad, without any explanation, and so she carefully plans out what she’s going to leave the girl tomorrow.

 

...

 

 

Camila assumes she won’t get anything from Lauren when she goes home for a week, alone, to spend time with her family, and she assumes that this will be the end of it. She’s wrong.

 

She gets a package every single day that she’s away that has books, or CD’s, or jewelry inside, and she starts wondering if making Lauren do this for almost three whole months has been excessive. I mean, not that she’s been _forcing_ Lauren to do _this_ , but she still hasn’t made any moves towards a romantic relationship again, so she’s not really doing anything to stop the other girl from making all of these gestures.

 

She gets back to LA on a Thursday and Lauren hugs her for a moment longer than everyone else. The girls notice. But they pretend they don’t.

 

There are still knowing smiles on their faces, though.

 

...

 

It’s when Camila steps out of the shower the next morning, and sees _you are so beautiful_ written in the steam on the mirror, that she decides maybe it’s time to move forward.

 

Not maybe. Definitely.

 

...

 

Today they are in the studio, which means that Camila finds Lauren on the fire escape in no time.

 

The older girl smiles when she sees her, “Hey, so how was Miami? I didn’t get a chance to ask for the recap yesterday.”

 

Camila leans forward and kisses Lauren instead of responding, and she feels the other girl smile into it. It feels even better than she remembered. It feels right.

 

“Took you long enough,” Lauren breathes out when they finally pull away from each other.

 

“I love you,” Camila responds, “Thank you for being patient.”

 

“I love you too. I’m not going anywhere this time.”

_Oh, all you had to do was stay_

__  
  



End file.
